Had Barrie Martin built a replica of Flintabattey Flonatin or the Smoke Stack, the connection to Flin Flon would be recognizable to anyone.
But even if the “Tobacco Road” sign in his front yard leaves some passersby perplexed, it stands as a meaningful homage to the community’s history.
“At one time this was the only road leading into Flin Flon,” says Martin, pointing to the street outside of his Phelps Ave. home.
Though largely forgotten by history, that road is indeed part of the original entry point to the community.
Once informally known as Tobacco Road, the portion of the road stretching from Channing to Flin Flon hasn’t been used by vehicles in many decades.
ATVers still traverse over its bumpy twists and turns, often without realizing its historical significance.
Living just off of South Hudson St. along the timeworn route for most of his life, Martin felt compelled to recognize the importance of Tobacco Road.
So a couple of years ago, the retired industrial mechanic – always good with his hands – built an old-fashioned sign for his yard.
Two cedar posts prop up a cedar plank with the words “Tobacco Road” emblazoned across it in white, all-capital letters.
Even the cedar pieces themselves carry significance – they were once part of a nearby ice house operated decades ago by a company called North Star Fuel and Ice.
Martin, now 76, still remembers how crews would cut ice from Spirit Lake, also nearby, and place the slabs in the ice house until they were sold for use in iceboxes.
When he was a boy of four or five, Martin would sometimes spot dairy cows walking along Tobacco Road.
Though the cows didn’t seem to mind, the road didn’t exactly offer friendly terrain.
“It was kind of a treacherous road,” Martin says. “If you got off on the side you were stuck, because it’s so wet.”
Martin says the road, once a red-light district, was named after Tobacco Road, a 1932 novel by Erskine Caldwell that deals with prostitution.
“My mother wouldn’t let us read it – it mentions sex,” he recalls with a laugh.
Martin was just a one-year-old infant when his family moved from Saskatchewan to Flin Flon, taking up residence in a tenthouse on Tobacco Road.
The Martins moved to other locations in the community before settling in a permanent home back on Tobacco Road about three years later.
By the early 1960s, Martin was ready to buy his own home. He didn’t move far, scooping up the house right across the street from where his parents had lived.
“Houses were cheap as dirt right about then because the company (HBMS, now Hudbay) was moving all these men to Snow Lake,” he recalls. “(People) had to sell a house for whatever they could get for it.”
And it is front of that home that Martin’s Tobacco Road sign stands, a friendly reminder of a bygone era.
